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Nintendo announced today the specifics of their anticipated WiiU release. The facts are this: A November 18th release in the US, priced at $299 for the standard model with an 8GB hard drive, $349 for one with 32GB.

This is all well and good, but in order for the WiiU to truly be a hit at launch, it needs some incredible titles available for the system right away. You'll remember that the 3DS suffered initially after release because of a lack of exciting launch titles, and only recently has it picked up steam.

The WiiU doesn't want to get off to a slow start like that, and as such, it needs to enter the market with a bang. It also has a disadvantage over the original Wii in terms of the hype-factor surrounding it, and the "change" it's trying to bring to the industry.

The Wii was a huge hit with those who weren't traditionally gamers because the concept was easy to explain. Through Wii Sports, the new motion controls were easily demonstrated to anyone who had ever played baseball, golf or tennis. You swing the controller, your character swings his bat/club/racket. Easy, and cool enough to spark millions of sales from the curious.

Explaining the WiiU's advancements are not so easy. The new gamepad with the inborn screen may very well be a fun new way to play games. But all efforts to explain to the masses how one player with a screen controller plays with three others using last-generation Wiimotes have not been quite as smooth. Watching the presentation today, it was fine for me to understand the demonstrators showcasing the various co-op and vs. gameplay experiences of Nintendo Land using the different controllers, but I think most non-gamers, the sorts who bought the Wii because of the lure of the intuitive motion controls, would be lost.

There's no simple concept here like there was with the advent of motion controls. As such, it's going to be a much harder sell to the sorts of "casuals" who now find the Wii collecting dust on their shelves. There's also a bit of "fool me once" here. The crowd who bought the Wii as their first console may have had fun with it for a time, but I'm willing to bet it's been seldom used in the last five years. As such, it's hard to picture them shelling out for a new, similarly named and themed console when they now realize they didn't use the original Wii all that much in the end. In short, it's hard to imagine the WiiU having the same sort of cultural impact as its predecessor, particularly at a higher price to boot.

If that's the case, then Nintendo has to have the launch resonate with its core fanbase, those who have grown up with Mario, Link, Samus and the lot of them. That requires launch titles that move any of the beloved Nintendo series forward in a meaningful way. But from what we've seen so far, that isn't quite happening. The biggest launch titles for the WiiU are the aformentioned Nintendo Land, a collection of minigames featuring their famous characters, a new Pikmin game and New Super Mario Bros. U, an updated version of an updated version of the classic sidescroller. In short, not really a new Mario game. Nintendo Land can be particularly frustrating for fans, as they don't want to play a mini-game with Link or Samus Aran, they want to play an actual Zelda or Metroid title.